KEELEY-AND THE MEN IN HER LIFE

When Keeley Hawes thinks about it, she's more than qualified to star in a drama about identity theft. She once had her credit card cloned and used in a spending spree in Spain. On another occasion, a trusted former employee siphoned Pounds 7,000 out of the savings account that she shares with her husband, the actor Matthew Macfadyen. "All of it was spent at Tesco's, which quite impressed me in itself," she laughs. "How on earth do you do that?"

It's a typical tongue-in-cheek remark that Hawes is liable to make in interviews. In the wrong hands, it could make her seem posh or out of touch with the Tesco class. But to her credit, she continues to be wonderfully unguarded, perky and uncalculating in conversation - despite having had her fingers singed unmercifully during previous interviews.

"Sometimes you wish you'd had a tape recorder yourself on the table, just for your own sanity," she says when I meet her on the set of Identity, a new six-part ITV drama that kicks off tomorrow.

Cheap Nike Shox Turmoil Metaphorically speaking, then, fame - of which this beautiful actress has had quite a bit since starring in Tipping the Velvet, Spooks and Ashes to Ashes - is as capable of stealing and distorting one's true identity as any card cloner. "But the truth is that there are far bigger nightmares than being misrepresented in print. Ask Ed Whitmore, the writer of Identity."

During his research, Whitmore uncovered some horrifying real- life tales of identity theft crime. "In fact, the whole subject of identity theft seems so timely, it's a wonder that we managed to get in there first with this drama," says Hawes.

Fortunate, too, for ITV that it was able to secure Hawes, still riding high on her success as DI Alex "Bollyknickers" Drake in Ashes to Ashes. Identity is an intelligent, gripping drama with its finger very much on the pulse, but the actress might have balked at playing another copper. Hawes is DSI Martha Lawson, head of a unit formed to combat identity theft, and her team includes an enigmatic undercover cop, DI John Bloom, played by The Wire star Aidan Gillen.

"Every week it's a really strong story, which makes it totally different to Ashes - which was all about the characters," says Hawes. "It's different, too, in that there was always a bit of will- they-won't-they stuff between Gene Hunt and Drake in Ashes, whereas Bloom is in love with a woman from his Chloe Bags undercover life and Martha is married to the job. She's a career policewoman without a partner or kids."

How different, then, to Hawes who defines herself, first and foremost, as a wife and mother. She fell in love with Macfadyen on the set of Spooks. It was bad timing, she admits. After all, she was only eight weeks into her first marriage to cartoonist Spencer McCallum, with whom she had her first child, Myles, now nearly 10. She was five months' pregnant with Maggie, her five-year-old daughter by Macfadyen, when she married him at a register office with just two friends as witnesses. They have a third child, Ralph, aged three.

"I love being married to Matthew. And I know Matthew loves being married, too. It ties everything up and it's a statement to each other and to the world. Marriage and being a mother are absolutely crucial to my happiness and my life."

Hawes is one of four children and doesn't rule out another baby. "I thought, because I'd had three children, I wouldn't get the ticking clock thing. But actually, your body starts saying, 'Go on, have another one.' And Matthew is very keen. But
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